An oil tanker and a Norwegian navy frigate collided off Norway’s west coast on Thursday, injuring eight individuals and triggering the shutdown of a North Sea crude export terminal, Norway’s largest fuel processing plant and a number of other offshore fields.

The frigate, which lately took half in a serious NATO army train, was tilting on one aspect and slowly sinking, dwell tv footage confirmed. The Norwegian army stated it was trying to save lots of the ship.

“The army is main a salvage operation in cooperation with the Coast Guards,” Norway’s armed forces stated in an announcement.

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The Kollsnes fuel plant, with a processing capability of 144.5 million cubic meters per day, has additionally been shut, Equinor stated. It was not instantly clear when it might restart operations.

The plant processes fuel from the Troll, Kvitebjoern and Visund fields and sends it to Britain and the remainder of Europe. Gas output from the Troll A platform had been shut, stated an Equinor spokeswoman.

UK wholesale fuel costs have been up forward of the incident and elevated additional afterwards. Gas for rapid supply was up 6.2 p.c at 66.50 pence per therm at 1136 GMT. Norway is a serious provider of fuel to Britain so large outages can influence UK fuel costs.

Flows from Norway to Britain have been down by 14-15 million cubic meters because of the outage at Kollsnes.

“Norwegian outages because of the collision have prompted additional shopping for. The market was already fairly bullish on account of decrease temperatures. It can also be not clear how lengthy they (the outages) will final,” a British fuel dealer stated.

There was no signal of any leak from the Sola TS oil tanker, though it might return to port for inspection, rescue chief Ben Vikoeren on the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre for southern Norway instructed Reuters.

The tanker had left Equinor’s Sture oil cargo terminal with a cargo of crude, and the power could be briefly shut as a precautionary measure, the corporate stated.

The Sture terminal receives oil by way of pipelines from a string of North Sea fields, together with the Oseberg, Grane, Svalin, Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen, which in flip is exported to world markets on oil tankers.

The Sture terminal has a capability to retailer a million cubic meters of crude oil and 60,000 cubic meters of liquefied petroleum fuel in rock chambers.

LPG combine and naphtha are additionally exported from the terminal by way of the Vestprosess pipeline to the Mongstad oil terminal.

It was not clear for the way lengthy the Sture terminal would stay closed, stated Equinor, including that oil output from Oseberg and Grane, which the agency operates, was shut in consequence.

Oseberg is likely one of the crude streams underpinning the worldwide Brent oil benchmark. Brent crude futures have been up 71 cents to $72.78 a barrel by 1007 GMT.

Output at Ivar Aasen, which produced about 95,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day within the third quarter, has additionally been shut down, operator Aker BP instructed Reuters.

Production on the Edvard Grieg area was additionally shut down, a supply with data of its operations stated.

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